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How To Write Headlines That Surprise The Brain

Roger Dooley over at Neuroscience Marketing wrote a fascinating piece on writing headlines that contain a clever word play on a cliché or otherwise well-known saying. In it, he points to research that shows the human brain's hippocampus acts as a prediction engine. When an expected word in a familiar phrase is instead substituted with another, it triggers unusual activity and causes our brains to notice the message more intensely that we otherwise might. Dooley's summary comes from a paper entitled, An Unexpected Sequence of Events: Mismatch Detection in the Human Hippocampus.

Dooley uses an example from Patrón, a tequila brand, which we feature below:

We could imagine some plays on other well-known phrases:

To market high-end ties or scarves:
"Don't cry over spilt silk"

Or perhaps an attempt to sell a French cheese:
"Barking up the wrong Brie"

Or maybe even one for us to sell more printing:
"All's well that sends mail"